Well, hello everybody.
Welcome out another podcast.
Got Dave here with me.
How are you Dave?
Well, I'm good.
I'm at a little cold.
It's the season, right?
Yeah, it is the season.
Anyway, but I'm doing better, Scott.
Good to be with you and look forward to talking about some seasonal things today.
Yeah, I'm excited about that.
You don't sound like your cold's taken too big of a toll on you.
I know you.
Yeah, I'm feeling a lot better than I was last week.
When I talked to you last week, you sounded like, I don't know, like you could sing bass
for a bluegrass band maybe or something.
Last week, you know, middle of the week, I went down to St. George actually, played a
little golf at Sand Hollow and that helped me kind of, I think, get better.
I think sometimes having a cold, I almost get better going and sweating it out or walking
it off or whatever, then it seems like laying down, I just get weaker.
If I lay down, it puts me in my head too long.
That's not a safe, that's a pretty rotten neighborhood sometimes to be in, is in my
own head.
Yeah, yeah.
So, Deb and I just got back from being down south as well.
We were down at the, it's called the National Finals Rodeo.
It's kind of like the Super Bowl of Rodeo and all the top athletes from all over the
world and it was kind of fun.
We had a great time down there.
You go down every year.
Every year, yep, every single year.
It's a fact in fact, this is the first year that I haven't ridden the mechanical bowl
on my birthday.
Oh really?
Yeah.
Just, I think at the age of, I'll be 59 tomorrow actually.
Yeah, your birthday's this week, tomorrow huh?
I guess that, you know, at this age I think I'm just, maybe I got smarter, I don't know.
Yeah, that's probably a good thing.
Did you ride it though?
No, I didn't.
You didn't even ride it?
No.
Okay.
No, first time.
You're probably wising up.
Maybe you're getting smarter taking your 59 years to figure that out.
Yeah, I guess that's a stretch, but I don't know.
We'll find out.
Happy birthday tomorrow.
Thank you very much.
It's almost Christmas.
Christmas is just around the corner.
Yeah, so sweet.
It's a pretty important day in the world of Christendom, no doubt, and because of the
commercialism of it too, I guess it's a pretty important day to everybody for the most part.
But we're going to spend a little bit of time focusing on some of the symbols of Christmas
as we dive in today's podcast.
You know, we've talked about this in the past and I think Dave and I both feel the same
way, but I love Christmas.
I really do.
I remember Christmas as a little boy.
Actually, as a little boy, every year we would go to what was David's house at the time,
my grandma and grandpa's house on Christmas Eve and have this huge celebration.
Food, cousins, presents, the nativity, and that nativity was really cool because each
year it was like I was the third oldest grandson, so I got to be Joseph number three.
But, you know, we grew up a whole bunch of grandkids and kids and I think that tradition
is kind of, we're doing it now in our home.
Yeah, we do too, Scott.
Yeah, Christmas is a wonderful time of the year.
In fact, I don't know quite how to describe this or how to talk about this in the right
way, but I often, Scott, think that Christmas is more than a holiday.
It can somewhat be a measure of our life and how we live it.
I mean, how we choose to live it, how we choose to see it, the feelings that we have during
Christmas is somewhat a sign, maybe a little bit of a magnification of how we see things
and feel things, not just during Christmas or this Christmas season, but throughout all
of the year.
In fact, again, I don't know if this is right or wrong or good or bad, but so many times
when I meet people, I don't know why I do this, Scott, I know it's really weird and
must be probably just a singular thing that's unique to me, is that I often ask myself,
I wonder how they celebrate Christmas.
I mean, this could be even strangers that I might see.
This could be in June.
This could be in June and I meet somebody in Iowa and I think, I wonder how they celebrate
Christmas.
And sometimes I'll drive past a farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere.
I would do this in Minnesota and Wisconsin or wherever I traveled out in the Midwest
and I would sometimes just think, again, this could be in the summer or any time of the
year and I would think, I wonder what goes on in that house during Christmas.
I ate at a restaurant not very long ago, no, three or four months ago.
I was in a restaurant that they had turned a house into a restaurant and I was sitting
in the restaurant, just Chris and myself, and I said to Chris, I'll bet they had some
great Christmases in this house.
I don't know why it is that I think so much about Christmas other than I think it's true
for me and I wonder if it's true for others that Christmas is something of a, more than
all the symbols that make up Christmas, Christmas itself can be something of a symbol of our
life.
How we see Christ, how we see celebrations, how we see the world, how we, I don't know,
I just think Christmas is a lot more than just celebrating the birth of Jesus.
I think it has so much to do with our relationship with Him throughout the entire year.
I don't drive past homes in the Midwest and think what would Christmas be like in there?
But I think that's super cool, maybe I will now that you've said that.
But what I do, there have been a lot of Christmases in my life, most of them growing up, all of
my Christmases growing up were magical for all the right reasons too, for all the right
reasons.
We learned about Jesus, we celebrated Jesus, it was for all the right reasons.
But when life got, life-ing in my case, later in life, when I say later in life, I mean
like in my early or late teens and through my 20s and even in my early 30s, Christmas
has changed.
When you were just saying all of that, it kind of occurred to me that I guess I could
use Christmas as kind of a metric almost.
A metric, that's a good word.
As how my life is.
Yeah, a measurement.
Something of a measurement.
Yeah, yeah.
Where, you know, like for example.
An assessment.
For the last 20 years since I've been married to my angel wife, Deborah, and we celebrate
Christmas together, it's been different and it's been amazing and it's back to those old
magical wonderful, but there have been Christmases prior to that, especially in the years that
you know, I was drinking and drugging and living my life without the, outside of the
will of our Heavenly Father.
And when I was doing that, there were some of those, and they were metrics too.
You know, I would come up to Christmas and it would be a stark reminder of all of the
garbage in my life.
And those were kind of, even though there was joy in them because I had the memories
and I had the imprint of the Spirit and all of that, which didn't go away, but it definitely
became clouded during those periods of time.
And I love now that as Christmas comes, I don't have to feel that way anymore.
There was a lot of anxiety, there was a lot of financial stress too, which didn't help.
And you know, and there was all of that.
And today, you know, it's just different because, and I think because of what you just said,
it is definitely a measurement.
It's a way I can measure my relationship with my Heavenly Father and Jesus.
It seems like it's the best of times and it can be the worst of times.
I mean, people who have lost loved ones, Christmas time can recall how much those loved ones
are missed.
People who are lonely become even more lonely this season of the year.
It's the best of times and it's the worst times.
But in all times, Scott, if Christ were more the center of it, you know, I just sometimes
we just say the word Christmas and we should say it Christmas.
I wish we would just kind of pronounce it even differently.
So many people don't really daily or hourly during the season see Christ in Christmas.
They love the lights, they love the symbols, they love the giving and the receiving of
gifts and all that goes on and all the traditions and all the songs and all the carols and music
and all of that we love.
But if we don't see Christ in all of that, in every bit of that, then we're missing out
on the real joy and peace and reason for the season.
When I was in first grade, Greenwood Elementary, American Fork, Utah, I'll never forget first
grade.
How old are you in first grade?
Six, seven, somewhere in that.
I'll never forget that it was around Christmastime and Mrs. Adams writes Christmas on the chalkboard.
It was during Christmastime.
And she says, I want to teach you something extremely important today.
And then she wrote Xmas.
You know, a lot of times people will abbreviate Christmas with an X-M-A-S, Xmas, Christmas.
She says, don't ever write Christmas with an X.
She was teaching us that in first grade.
It was important to her that as first graders, even, and I know, I don't know if there were
or not, but I'm assuming there were probably kids in the class that weren't even LDS, but
they knew about Christmas and everything like that, right?
And she's like, it's not Xmas.
We don't celebrate X's birthday.
We celebrate Christ's birthday.
Don't ever.
And she was like, don't ever demean the name of Jesus by putting an X where Christ belongs.
Sweet, you bring that up, Scott.
But actually, X-X was the Greek symbol for Christ.
Oh, well.
You just totally changed my childhood.
Yeah.
Well, I think that's cool that your teacher taught you that.
She'd probably get fired for that today.
Definitely.
Yeah.
But actually, Xmas, if you see Xmas, you should see Christ because X was the Greek symbol
for Christ.
How cool.
Yeah.
So I didn't know that.
Yeah, it's true.
And so even Xmas, you should see Christ in that.
In fact, I almost, when I see X, I see Christ.
Yeah.
I see Christ.
Yeah.
And that's the Scottish flag, my great trip I had this year going to Scotland.
And the Scottish flag is the X, right?
Yeah.
And that X is a symbol of St. Andrew, who was crucified on the X in Greece.
And so I don't know.
The X can actually be a really powerful religious symbol and is, literally is, the Greek symbol
for Christ.
Well, I don't know if any of you learned anything today, but I just learned something really
cool.
Yeah, kind of cool.
Either way, though, it was interesting that in a secular environment that we were encouraged
to focus on Jesus even then.
That's really cool.
And there are so many other symbols like X.
Yeah.
There are so many other symbols of this time of year that I think we should see Christ
in whenever we see the symbols that I think it would just kind of be fun to review some
of those.
And I know this probably isn't new to most of our listeners, but I think it's just always
good to think about it.
And maybe we can all increase our effort to see Christ in all the symbols that we see.
I'm, you know, we live in such a secular world and it seems to become sometimes more and
more secular and I enjoyed a really wonderful Christmas TV show with my sweetheart last
week and we watched the whole show and we enjoyed it immensely.
And it dawned on me near the end of the show that all the great performers and all of the
songs that were sung, not one of them had made reference to Jesus.
And it made me kind of sad and it kind of perked up my own self-awareness that I need
to do better in even the songs that I listen to, which I have a great Christmas playlist,
but I need to really, even the songs I listen to, make them as Christ-centered as possible
this time of year.
And so in all that we do this season, let's think of Christmas.
So let's review some of the symbols, Scott, pick one and let's talk about it.
Well, you know, before we do that too, let's just extend an invitation right now.
We know that many of you will have symbols that are meaningful to you.
We'd love it if you would share those with us.
Yeah, that'd be fun.
Send us an email to heredeemsus at gmail.com and share those with us and we may even hire
you to highlight a couple of those in upcoming episodes.
So have you do that.
I don't know if I have a favorite symbol.
In fact, I'm sure I don't.
I was just thinking, what's my favorite symbol?
What's my favorite symbol?
But you know, I think one of the ones that maybe I'll point out, first of all, is just
the star.
You know, we think of the star, we put it on the Christmas tree and of course it's representative
of the star that's shown above Bethlehem, the birth of the Savior and acted as a guiding
star, you know, for wise men and for shepherds.
And for all those here in the Americas, you know, Samuel prophesied, Samuel in the Book
of Mormon in Helaman chapter 14, he prophesies that there will be a new star and there will
be a day and a night and a day as if it were one day.
It seems to me, and President Nelson said this actually not long ago, a few years ago,
that the whole world would have maybe experienced a day and a night and a day as if it were
one day, that the whole world was lit up by this new star.
So I don't, you're right, that was prophesied five years before it ever happened.
And wise men had been looking for it for probably years as well.
And when we talk about next, either today or on our next podcast, I want to talk about
the first event, the first Christmas and some of the events and talk about those wise men
and possibly see them a little differently than we normally do.
Maybe there were three, but maybe there were 12.
Then maybe they weren't just Magi, but maybe they were prophets or apostles.
So that'll be interesting for us to talk about on probably our next podcast, Scott.
But I love the symbol of the star as well.
To me that was to, if we would follow the star, that would lead us to Christ.
Even in the book of Revelation, the apostle John refers to Jesus Christ as the morning
star, which is the important symbol on the Nabu temple in the windows, in the beautiful
stained glass windows.
So the star is definitely not just a symbol of his birth, but it becomes a symbol of Christ
himself being the light, being the light of the world.
Yeah.
And when, you know, I think that it can, uh, and it does often for me, you know, when I
see that star, Deb and I have a big star hanging out above our garage and people think when
they drive by, are you from Texas?
No, we just love this door, you know, and this is why, you know, that star reminds me
just like the wise men, just like Samuel, the Lamanite, it reminds me to always be looking
for him, uh, to, to, to make sure, you know, is my course, uh, headed in towards the star?
Am I headed in the right direction?
And very frequently, uh, probably not every day, but, but semi-frequently that star, I
hit it as, where does it sound as that star hanging out above my garage that year round?
Yeah.
When I see that sometimes I think it's not one with lights on it.
No, it's just a big, big,
Big star.
Big.
It's a big, yeah.
Like the one on your belt buckle.
Exactly.
Or the one on your spurs.
Yeah, that way I got all those too, but yeah.
Right?
And you think about Jesus every time you see those.
When I see the one hanging above my garage, I absolutely do.
I think it's a symbol that we should think about year round.
I do.
I really do.
When we see stars, we should think of the star.
We should.
And we should think of Christ.
And to me, it, it does remind me, you know, mariners used it.
They used the stars.
They did.
To, to guide their ships.
Am I using the star to guide my life?
And that's a question I should ask myself.
The star of David is the great Jewish symbol, right?
The star of David, which really is a symbol of the second David, which is Jesus Christ,
the King of Israel.
Yeah.
So, uh, anyway, I think the star, so many.
What's one of your favorites?
So many great symbols of the star.
Well, let's, let's talk about the candy cane, a simple symbol like the candy cane.
Yeah.
It's, you know, I've always loved candy canes as a little boy growing up and, and, um, you
know, never really understood or appreciated.
I think the, the symbol of the candy cane, which is really a symbol of the shepherds,
the, the, the shepherd's crook, the, you know, the, the, them guiding their sheep and having
that to be, to be their, some, something of a protection for them as well.
And uh, and then to have it be colored, usually red and white, lots of different flavors today,
but, but primarily red and white, which is a symbol, always a symbol of red being the
blood of Christ and white, the sinless life of Christ and his purity, the purity, uh,
the virtue, the, uh, virgin and the virtue involved in the story of Christmas.
So I just, I've always loved that story of the shepherds again, which we'll recount when
we talk about the first Christmas later in this podcast or the next, but there's some,
I was in Bethlehem, um, I was in Bethlehem many years ago and I was in shepherd's field
and we were singing Christmas carols in, in June and, uh, sitting there in shepherd's
field, looking over at Bethlehem, I could see the church of nativity where, uh, many
believe Jesus was born.
And I tried to picture there, these shepherds, these young shepherds, some old watching their
sheep by night.
Yeah, we'll talk more about that, I guess, Scott, but I've always loved the candy cane
because I, I go back to that experience I had in, in the shepherd's field, just outside
of Bethlehem.
And I, it was really one of the most sacred experiences I had in the Holy land.
I'm excited, we're going there in March, uh, with some family members looking really forward
to that.
You know, when I think of the, uh, the, uh, crook, the, the, the candy cane, that's the
shepherd's crook.
I have a lot of feeling that goes with that.
You know, grandpa, your dad was a sheep herder as a little boy, right?
And he has shared with me some of his most wonderful experiences being out on the mountain
down in, you know, um, Hanksville and various places, and herding sheep as a little, just
a little boy.
I, there's no way I'd send my, my kid at that age out to do what he was sent to do.
Yeah, no, that's where he got his testimony.
Yeah.
He said he was 16 years old.
But anyway, so when I think, when I think of sheep, uh, shepherds, I think of the contrast
between a sheep herder and a shepherd.
Right, good.
Because you know, Jesus was the great shepherd and he would have as a great shepherd used
one of those crooks.
Sheep herders don't really use the crook.
Sheep herders use dogs and ropes, you know, and, and sheep herding is about force.
Sheep herding is about keeping everything together and driving them instead of leading
them.
Exactly.
And you know them as sheep.
Um, but the shepherd knows the sheep's by sheep by name.
And the shepherd, um, is out in front and is the leader.
And uh, you know, if one were to get off the path, you know, that crook could be used to
kind of keep them safe or to pull them out of a ravine or a ditch or a, you know, a very
dangerous situation.
And I see that crook is, is, uh, one of the tools that maybe Jesus uses to pull me a lost
sheep along sometimes.
And I appreciate it.
Well, he is, he referred to himself as the good shepherd.
Right.
And at the door of the sheep.
And uh, so you know, you can take the candy cane, not just to represent the shepherds
who the angels appeared to and saying, and, and who went to the manger and saw the babe
lying in the manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes.
But you can think of the candy cane should again remind us of Jesus himself, who was
the ultimate shepherd and is the ultimate shepherd to each of us as hopefully we see
ourselves as the sheep.
Anyway, so I think that's one of my favorite symbols.
What's another one, Scott?
Well, how about, uh, how about bells?
You know, let's talk about that Christmas bells.
For example, we've got, I remember again as a little boy, my grandpa Fagan, my mom's dad,
big time horse guy, big time cowboy had, um, when I was a little boy, we used to have Shetland
ponies that we had trained to pull as a team, a big buckboard wagon.
And during the winter, you know, we would drive those around and he had sleigh bells,
you know, the kind, and Deb actually, a few years ago, they're hanging right there in
my office.
And just a few years ago, Deb, uh, I guess maybe 10 bought me those as a remembrance
of that.
So, you know, every Christmas morning, even when I was in high school, David, we didn't
get out of bed.
We spent Christmas Eve at your house with my Durfey side of the family.
And then on Christmas morning, we didn't get out of bed.
We didn't have to worry about it though, cause he usually came quite, quite early, five o'clock
sometimes, maybe earlier.
And he would, the first thing we'd hear in the morning are those bells ringing, you know,
and it's a sleigh bells, you know, I wish I could replicate it.
I should have thought about it, but I'm not going to walk over and grab those right now.
But, uh, but it would be those sleigh bells.
We had here, and it would be a, an announcement.
Okay.
The announcement was grandpa's here.
It's okay.
Now a call.
It's okay now to come and receive the gifts.
And it's a little boy.
You don't think of it that way, but, but that's what the bells represent now.
Right?
I mean, we, we think about, um, uh, what's, what's quoted in Luke two 14 glory to God
in the highest and on earth, peace and goodwill towards men.
When I hear those bells, I hear that now as a call, a call to what a call to come receive
the gift, the gift of what the gift of the atonement of Jesus Christ, which compensates
enables and takes care of all of the other things in our lives that are just not exactly
right.
I love the bells.
Bells can warn us as well.
Bells were would be used for warning.
Jesus warns us.
We should all be in preparation for his second coming.
The bells do call us.
They do.
The bells are used to make announcements.
Um, I love the, I love the symbol of bells as well, Scott, how about the, um, how about
the, the holly berry?
Uh, how does that song go?
Scott, I'm not going to sing it.
Last time I sang on here, you, yeah, you shouldn't know.
That's probably the wrong song.
You shouldn't sing either.
It's sorry.
It's pine cones and holly berries.
Oh, there you go.
Well, you know, the ivy, if you really look at the ivy, it's very sharp and it should
remind us of the crown of thorns.
Yeah.
And, uh, and then they have these red berries in the holly, in the sharp, sharp holly with
pointed needles.
They have the red berries, which remind us of his blood.
So I think of the crown of thorns and the blood of Christ when I, when I think of the
holly, the green holly and the red berries.
So I think that's a great symbol and that's on so many Christmas cards and it's on so
many wreaths.
Wreaths, wreaths themselves, Scott, are a symbol of a circle, meaning eternity, usually
made up of, of, of pine, uh, which is an evergreen, which means that we will never truly die,
that we live forever and ever in mortality, which is the Christmas tree itself, right?
The Christmas tree and the needles pointing upward and so many great symbols.
Well, and that tree and wreaths.
Yeah.
That round shape representing eternity.
Right.
And you know, I'm just looking on the church's website right now.
They actually have some of these 10 symbols of Christmas.
And for this one, they actually have a scripture that's quoted from Doctrine and Covenants
35 verse one.
I'm going to read it.
It says, listen to the voice of the Lord, your God, even Alpha and Omega, the beginning
and the end, whose course is one eternal round, the same today as yesterday and forever.
Yeah.
And that's a representation of the wreath.
Yeah.
When you see circles, that's what you should think of is, is eternity.
You know, the prophet once took off his ring, you know, and round the ring.
Right.
There's no beginning and there's no end when you see a circle.
Wreaths represent that.
I know that on our door at my house, we have this beautiful handmade wreath that my wife
made with many of these symbols on it.
And in the center and at the very bottom of the wreath is the baby Jesus.
And I just I love the symbol of wreaths as well and hope that we see Christ in evenness,
something as simple as a as a wreath, whether it be in the store or on the door or wherever.
What else, Scott?
Well, how about poinsettias?
You know, that's one that we don't sometimes think about.
Poinsettias, which, you know, are a plant that thrives this time of year.
It's kind of interesting that that plant thrives in the wintertime.
I know many of them come from down south, but it's the redness of it, the shape of it.
This it's kind of in a star shape.
The red color, which again should remind us of the blood of Christ and redemption through
his blood.
Yeah, I love I love.
And sometimes the white right poinsettias remind us of the purity, the sinlessness.
The virtue that's all symbolized by the by the virgin birth of Christ and the life of
Christ.
So that's that's a great symbol.
You know, the other thing about poinsettias, too, is the poinsettias, just like any other
flower, there's they're layered.
There's a top layer of petals.
There's another layer of petals.
There's another layer of petals typically, right?
Typically on a poinsettia, the top layer is five, five petals, you know, and we know that
that's a that's a number that's representative of the crucifixion crucifixion of Jesus Christ,
because that was the number of nails that was used to carry out the crucifixion.
Right.
So you know, when I see a point, slight pointed stars that we see, those white pointed leaves.
Yeah, yeah.
All of that number five is kind of the atonement number.
So that the number five itself is symbolic.
Yeah.
And you know, if you look close enough, you can see that you like you just said, five
pointed star, the five petals of the poinsettia, you know, maybe there's others, too, that
we're not thinking.
The sand dollar, the sand dollar.
Oh, yeah.
Hey, tell that.
So Dave's got a really cool story about sand dollars.
I didn't know anything about sand dollars until I married into my Terry family, my wife's
family.
And I think it was the first or second Christmas early on in our marriage.
Our mom and dad would always bring out a sand dollar that they had purchased, you know,
since we live here, we're not on a beach.
You can find them, I guess, all over on the beach.
My daughter found one when they were in Florida recently.
Anyway, they have the they had a sand dollar and they bring it out and they talk about
the five marks representing the the marks, the nails.
Yeah.
So on the front of the sand dollar looks like a five pointed star.
Yeah.
They talk about the marks of Jesus, you know, the nails of Jesus, the five holes that are
in the sand dollar.
There's a star on the sand dollar.
The sand dollar is actually a sea urchin.
I don't know if people know what we're even talking about.
I don't know what the technical name of this.
I don't either.
Of this urchin is, but it lives in the bottom of the ocean and and it's usually purple in
color or brownish red.
But it turns white once it's been in the sun.
All right.
And when it dies and it comes, I think it's illegal to actually catch them alive.
So you can't get one until it's dead.
And when it's dead, it's on the beach and the salt in the sand.
It bleaches out to this white, the color white, which again is a symbol.
Anyway, the first time I found this sand dollar and there was a story that went with it.
And I'm going, wow, is this even for real?
The first time I experienced this with my new in-law family.
And then at the very end, after talking about the star and the something of a poinsettia,
the flower that you can see on the on the sand dollar and the five marks, and then they
broke it open and they they outcomes five little stone like in the shape of a dove,
very small, teeny.
But they said, and these are the five doves.
And I'm going, what?
Wow.
The symbols of the sand dollar and the five doves, of course, represent peace, the peace
that we all have been promised because of Christ.
My peace, I leave with you.
And the dove is also a symbol of the Holy Ghost.
So I just I was so taken back by this amazing symbol.
And I I'm I'm going to tell my wife, we got to resurrect that tradition because I don't
do that with my kids or my grandkids.
And I want to get a sand dollar before Christmas this year.
And I want to kind of start that new tradition in my family is to tell the story and to use
that as a powerful symbol of Jesus Christ this Christmas.
Yeah, that's a fantastic idea.
Not sure where you'll find one.
I think you can buy them pretty much in probably get one on online on Amazon.
It's probably true.
You buy anything.
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
I didn't think of that.
Yeah, that's that's fantastic.
That's naturally a cool story.
I hadn't heard that before this morning.
Dave says I think you collect them.
I did.
But when I lived in Seattle, we'd go out on the beach, not in Seattle, obviously, but
out on the coast.
And Trevor, when he was just a little boy, would love running up and down the beach,
picking up those sand dollars.
And then I remember one time he put them all in a plastic bag and left them in the back
of my car.
And I forgot about him.
And man, my car stunk.
I guess they need to be cleaned.
But not to distract, though, from the coolness of that story.
Yeah, Dave was telling me that story this morning.
I had never heard that before.
So I think I'm kind of anxious to try stories and poems that have been written.
And I want to make that more important Christmas symbol this year with my family.
What's another one of your favorites?
Oh, how about the lights themselves?
Yeah.
On the Christmas tree, usually heavy on the red and the green.
Right.
Yeah.
Just the colors themselves.
Yeah.
The green, red, representing again the blood and the death and the suffering and the sacrifice
of Jesus Christ.
And the green, representing life.
Green is the symbol of life and the eternal life that Jesus, the resurrection which Jesus
Christ made possible for all of us that we might have immortality.
So I love those symbols.
And then, of course, the white light, which is a symbol of eternity and being the light
of the world.
And I love the symbols of the lights that we hang.
And you could go on blue as a symbol of the Godhead.
All the all the colors represent and symbolize different things.
I think that we could definitely relate to Jesus Christ in some way.
Yeah.
I just, Elder Bednar made a comment about lights one time talking about Christmas.
I'd like to read it.
He says, many of our memorable and enduring Christmas traditions include different kinds
of lights.
Lights on trees, lights in and out on our homes, candles on our tables.
May the beautiful lights of every holiday season remind us of Him who is the source
of all light.
Yeah, pretty profound there, you know.
And I think that if there was, I don't know if I even should say this, but if there was
one symbol that probably might be the most important that might, in my opinion, might
be the light, because that is what Jesus is.
You know, the light of all the world, the light of everything, actually, quite literally.
And I really love that one myself.
Angels.
Angels is a great one.
Angels are an important symbol of Christmas.
We see angels.
We sometimes hang them on the top of our tree or we see them again on cards or whatever.
You know, the angels proclaiming to the shepherds and proclaiming to us and proclaiming to others.
I'm sure throughout the world when Jesus was born, I'm sure there were many who.
Heralding in a new dispensation.
Yes.
You know?
Yeah.
And of all of the prophecies, patriarchs and prophets before the 4000 years from Christ
to Adam.
So I think angels is really a sweet symbol.
You know, it's we think about it, but I think another one is Christ being born in the manger.
The symbolism, you know, he could have the king of all kings born in a manger.
Well, that comes that kind of leads us into that first story of Christmas.
And we'll talk maybe in more detail, but maybe just to say here that the manger was probably
made of stone, right?
Not wood.
They didn't really use so much animal troughs as we do in a barn here.
Most of their troughs were out of limestone.
It was more readily available than right.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so they would have had probably a stone manger, which the stone, the rock, here's
this baby who is the rock, the foundation of our salvation.
You know, anyway, they're somewhat symbol to that to that manger, not only him being
born in a lowly place, a poor place who descended below all things right from the very beginning,
but the rock that he's laid on.
So the manger is such a great symbol.
If I think we really could understand what it was like that first Christmas.
Anything else, Scott?
Any other symbols?
I'm sure there's some of our listeners are screaming at the radio or their phone right
now because we're not thinking of all the symbols of Christmas.
We really didn't intend this to be completely exhausted.
Even St. Nick, I think even St. Nicholas or Santa Claus can be an important symbol of
Jesus.
But I love this picture, which we hang up every year right after Thanksgiving is a picture
of Santa Claus coming out of a home after delivering gifts.
And he has his bag on his shoulder and he's kneeling in the snow because there is a picture
or it's not a picture, but a monument of Jesus Christ.
It's kind of the Christus monument in this painting.
And there is Santa Claus with this sack on his back and him kneeling in the snow worshiping
Jesus.
Yeah.
Then I just dressed in red and white again.
St. Nicholas and the old tradition of St. Nicholas saving a family.
This goes back to Eastern Europe where the man who was so poor was going to lose his
daughters to servitude or worse forms than that because he was so poor.
And how St. Nick drove past this man's house and threw in three bags of gold, which landed
in the stockings that were hanging by the fireplace drying.
You know, they would put their winter socks by the fireplace to dry them out.
And St. Nicholas throws in three bags of gold that land in the stockings at the fireplace.
So Santa Claus or St. Nick saving this family from being lost or separated.
And I love that tradition and that thought.
So when I see the socks, I think of drying the socks by the fireplace and St. Nick's
saving this family.
And I think that's such an important symbol.
So yeah, let's talk about that for just a second.
So here's a dad.
He's got three daughters.
He's losing.
He's so poor that he is considering what we would say the unconsiderable.
We would never consider in our day and age doing what he was selling out his daughter.
Yeah.
And just so that they could.
And so he was destitute.
He had nothing left.
Totally, totally gone.
And here comes St. Nicholas and for no merit of their own.
Right.
They didn't merit St. Nicholas's gift.
They didn't earn it.
All they did was they were entitled.
But they were able to receive it somehow.
For some reason, opened their windows, which made them open their windows, able, open their
hearts to receive the gift.
The windows being the eyes, the heart could be the fireplace, right?
Or the window.
And here's the here are these socks ready to receive.
And yeah, you know, and that's what we're just asked to do.
We're just asked to receive this gift.
And what a great time as we consider all of the gifts that have ever been given.
The gift of eternal life that's been afforded to each of us because of the atonement of
Jesus Christ.
We don't merit it.
We align with it.
Right.
In order to receive it.
We don't merit it.
And along comes Jesus Christ.
And, you know, in the story that you just rendered, along comes St. Nicholas, a representation
of Jesus Christ and gives a gift that they received.
What a beautiful, what a beautiful story.
I guess other than the Christ child himself, which is.
You know, is the giving of gifts at Christmas that should point us to Christ because God
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should
not perish but have everlasting life.
And so I guess maybe for me, the ultimate symbol is maybe the symbol of gifts themselves
and the act of gift giving.
And I think we read this not very long ago.
In fact, I think I shared this in our last podcast when I shared kind of my my dream
or parable about the gift of the ticket.
But this this passage in Doctrine and Covenants 32 33, which says, speaking of the wicked,
this is speaking of really the sons of perdition, they shall return again to their own place
to enjoy that which they were willing to receive because they were not willing to enjoy that
which they might have received.
For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him and he received not the
gift?
Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the
giver of the gift.
So I this whole idea and practice tradition that we have sacred tradition of giving and
receiving gifts, Scott should definitely point us to Christ, the gift of the father giving
us his son and the gift of the son reaching down to us and condescending to our level
becoming a man, a God, creator of the world, Jesus Christ, Jehovah coming down on our level
and becoming a mortal and experiencing all of the hurt, all of the pain, all of the injustices
and inequities of mortality, what a gift that he gives us and the great thing that we should
always be asking ourselves, I think this season is so, in all of my preparation to give and
receive gifts, what has Jesus given me and second question is and what gift can I give
him?
Yeah.
And when I think of that, Scott, there are so many, I'm sure, great answers of all the
gifts that we could give him, the gift of our heart, all the gifts, but I think of King
Lamona's father in that amazing prayer where he says, I would give, when he's praying to
the father and he's for the first time learning about God and about Christ from the sons of
Mosiah, specifically Aaron, and he says, I would give away all of my sins to know thee.
I think what a gift.
Yeah.
And there's some irony in this.
To give the gift of sin, to give the gift of sin to Jesus makes him so happy.
I think, wow, the love of God, oh, the condescension of God.
To give him our sins.
I don't know, I think that he may see that as perhaps the greatest offering or the greatest
gift that we can give him, to give him a bad habit, to give him our addictions, to give
him our pain, to give him our loneliness, our hurt, to give him all of that and for
him to take it so gladly because he's already suffered it because of the gift that he gave
us is, I think, the essence of the message behind Christmas.
It's impossible for me to give that wicked gift without his helping me to give it to
him.
That's the gift he wants.
And I can't give it to him without his help.
Right, until you understand the gift he gave us, then you feel gratitude for that.
That becomes the motivating source and power for us to give him all of our sins, all of
our hurt, all of our pain, all of that.
And to give him our broken heart.
When we say give him our heart, it really is a broken heart.
I just think it's so amazing to think about that.
We don't even give him a good heart.
We give him a broken one.
The broken one, yeah.
It's not even a good one.
Which is what he really asks of us.
So I hope this Christmas season that we can see Christ in any form, even the X.
Yeah, I'm glad you shared that with me.
Even the X or anything else, it should really be centered in Christ.
Maybe we need to consider changing up some of our traditions, some of our celebrations,
then to just make sure that our thoughts and our lives and everything about Christmas is
centered in Jesus Christ.
You know, we live in a time when we've seen trials and troubles in the world that are
just never before seen.
We are seeing economic times.
We are in a, and this is worldwide.
And I know we have listeners all across the world in 45 different countries.
Actually, we have listeners and I know that this is a phenomenon that's taken place all
over the world.
You know, we have inflation that is at highs that we haven't seen in 41 or 42 years.
And what that means is that retirements are getting shrunk and the dollar's not, or our
currency isn't going as far as it has in the past.
And that's creating some stresses and that can affect a parent's ability to provide a
Christmas that maybe they wanted to provide and all those things.
But I think that when these types of trying times comes, it gives us all an opportunity,
regardless of our affluence or lack thereof.
It gives us an opportunity to really consider what you just shared.
You know, the gift, the greatest gift of all, the Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And just as we've talked about so many times when we talk about how do we have His Spirit
to be with us, how do we really work to have Him here?
When we are in our rock bottoms, how do we get that changed?
And I think in order for us to receive this gift, we have to do the same thing that we
have to do for those.
We have to go and visit and be with Him there.
We have to go to Gethsemane and receive that gift.
We need to go to the cross and receive the gift that continues there.
And even into the garden tomb when the gift of the resurrection and all things being made
pure and whole again.
Jesus was born so that He could carry all of that out.
And in a few months, we'll be doing again like we did last year, a very special week
on the crucifixion and the resurrection, the Easter time.
But as we start preparing for that, just as He did, I hope that it's in each of us this
year, this time of year, in this year especially, given all given the state of the world and
the economy and all of the things that are troubling so many people.
I hope that we will go to the place where Jesus was, and I hope we'll walk with Him
and we will receive the gift that's priceless above all gifts this year.
Well, Scott, I thank you.
Amen to that.
I think another thing that we can do, which we do, I think most do this, is to really
consider others and how we can help to lift and minister to others.
I think one of my favorite—and I didn't discover this until I was in my twenties—one
of my favorite stories is O'Henry's story of the other wise man or the fourth wise man.
And this story of this fourth wise man who's looking for Jesus and he has all of these
diamonds and all of this money that he's going to bring as part of his gift to Jesus,
and in his search for Jesus, following the star, being separated from the other three
wise men, being delayed because he was serving others, and because he helped this woman and
he helped this caravan and he helped that.
Anyway, he doesn't get there in time and he doesn't find Jesus, as the story goes,
until he's on his way to the cross.
Then 33 years it's taken him to find Jesus.
And it's so sweet how the story ends and Jesus says to him—O'Henry quotes from Matthew
chapter 5 when Jesus looks at this other wise man as he's on his way to the cross—then
he says, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world.
For I was a hungred, and ye gave me meat.
I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink.
I was a stranger, and ye took me in naked, and ye clothed me.
I was sick, and ye visited me.
I was imprisoned, and ye came unto me.
I love that message.
I love that story as being part of this time of the year, this season, of reaching out
and helping and serving others, maybe even members of our own family, our own ward who
we can minister to, those who are hurting, those who need an act of love to buoy them
up this time of year.
I think those are also gifts that when we give them to others, when we go to the prison,
we visit the prisoners, and we go to the homeless, and we go to those who are needy, that's
a gift to Jesus himself.
Because this other wise man, he'd spent his whole inheritance helping others along the
way.
Here he is, he finds Jesus on his way to the cross.
And he has nothing left to give him.
And nothing to give him.
And Jesus says, come and inherit the mansions of my father.
You've given me your all.
You've given me everything because you gave it to others.
And I think that's an important message that we should consider this Christmas time as
well.
I think some of the best Christmases we've had in our family is one year how we didn't
give gifts to one another.
We took all of the money and bought gifts and kind of had found a family that lived
in a poor area of town and identified a family and all of us took gifts and sacks to this
family and left it on their porch.
I think those are some of the more meaningful, memorable Christmases that we can really feel
this true spirit of Christmas.
And I just had this thought around gifts because as you talk about those gifts, I think sometimes
for some of us it's easier for us to give gifts than it is to receive.
But I think that Christmas isn't Christmas unless we learn to receive too, right?
And to receive that gift, the greatest gift that's been provided to anybody at any time,
well to all of us at all times through the atonement of Jesus Christ, that's what Christmas
is, is that gift.
And as we talked about in past podcasts, we talked about how do we become more Christ-like
and we talked about, well, by forgiving others, that's one way that we can become more Christ-like
and by going to the garden where he was and the cross where he was and studying about
him.
But we really learn to be more like somebody when we emulate them.
And when we're giving, when we are giving and when we are actually also receiving, we
are really walking then as Jesus would have us walk during this time of year, David.
Well, I love that scripture in King Benjamin's address.
How can you know the master if you haven't served him?
And then he says, if you have served others, you have served me.
So I think to come to know Jesus, we have to be engaged in his work, the work of salvation
and helping to serve others.
And maybe this scripture comes to my mind in just concluding here, thinking about what
can we give Jesus, perhaps maybe an ultimate verse of scripture on what can we give him,
what can we offer him.
I love this scripture in Omni verse 26.
And now my beloved brethren and sisters, I would that ye should come unto Christ, who
is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation and the power of his redemption.
What gifts?
Yea, come unto him and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him, and continue in fasting
and prayer, and endure to the end, and as the Lord liveth, ye will be saved.
So Merry Christmas everybody, and we will do another special podcast next week as we
review the historical events of the first Christmas.
And I look forward to doing that then, Scott, just a few days before Christmas or the week
of Christmas.
Our intention behind doing two episodes just prior to Christmas is the intent behind this
one I think is that it begins to put our minds in line with what is it that we should be
doing.
What can I, Scott Durfee, do and what can you, each of our listeners, do to invite him
more into our lives during this time of year.
And then the other thing that we also must at the same time consider is what is it in
my life that I am willing to give him?
What sins?
As King Lamone, his father, what sins am I willing, what habits, what can I give him?
And as we contemplate that and think about that, we have a perfect opportunity coming
up on Sunday once again as we partake of the sacrament to make that part of our covenant
relationship.
And may God bless us each to do that as we are moving into this.
I look forward to next week when we get into the historical and the first Christmas story
and all of that.
But we did this in preparation for that so that our hearts and our minds can be set on
those things.
Thank you for being with us.
Dave, do you have anything final?
Have a good week everybody.
We'll talk next week.
Yep, look forward to it and until then.
Enjoying the spirit of the season, the reason for the season.
May God be with you always.
May you remember that you have been redeemed through His blood.
Thanks for being with us.